A new report on ‘The State of the Family’ says unaffordable housing for low income people is being exacerbated by the nation’s multi-speed economy and community values that prize housing as a commodity for wealth creation rather than an essential and universal good.
The 11th ‘State of the Family Report, Staying Power, launched today at the start of Anti-Poverty Week, highlights affordable housing and completing a Year 12 education as crucial gateways for Queenslanders in-need to reconnect with society and achieve greater social inclusion.
Spiritus, a caring arm of the Anglican Church in Queensland, has joined with Anglicare Australia in releasing the report, analysing the social damage done by a multi-speed economy in which the disadvantaged are left further behind and requiring additional support from not-for-profit services.
Executive Director of Spiritus, Ms Della Warren, said the report identified and analysed causes of social exclusion that resulted in people becoming economically and socially marginalised.
“The report shows that housing and education are important pathways out of social exclusion. Early school leavers (Year 11 or less) experience far higher levels of exclusion, three times the rate of those who have completed Year 12.
Resources should be directed at addressing familial and external factors beyond the school gate that stop children attending school and participating in learning. Rather than not-for-profit organisations supplying emergency relief, there is a need to identify at risk children and address the multiple hardships that prevent full participation in education and to provide support that enables them to value learning and to achieve,” Ms Warren said.
The report found that the cost of living was impossible for many people and that the multispeed economy had produced a private rental market that was out of reach for low income people.
According to the report, Queensland resources boom towns can be the most expensive, for example in Dysart rents are more than $1,000 a week.
The 2011 ‘Rent Affordability Snapshot’ survey of private rental housing advertised in the greater Brisbane area earlier this year highlighted the scarcity of suitably priced rental accommodation.
Hardest hit were single young people and couples with two or more children on government benefits.
Ms Warren said the survey found that low income people were further excluded by high rents as they were forced to cut back on necessities to pay the rent.
“As families and individuals spend more on meeting housing costs, they have less to spend on other basic needs such as food, health and education. This has a negative impact on society because people have less capacity to engage with and contribute to their community more broadly,” Ms Warren said.
Ms Warren joined Anglicare Australia’s Executive Director, Kasy Chambers, in calling for the growing inequity being fuelled by the nation’s multi-speed economy to be reversed.
“That means getting real about income- lifting allowances like Newstart for example – and tying negative gearing concessions into secure and affordable housing.
As the writer of one chapter of the report observes: “Rather than considered as an essential or universal good, housing has become a commodity for wealth creation,” Ms Warren said.